Fantasy Heartbreakers -- Why So Damn Many

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 3:16 am

You know, with D&D's 'magic can do anything' and its aggressive incorporation of European, Greek, and Middle Eastern fantasy (and as more often the case, Chinese) fantasy it's pretty hard not to do a pre-Industrial fantasy setting that doesn't have people going 'hey, that's D&D'.

Settings that specifically want to avoid that comparison have to go out of their way ditch standard D&D tropes. But unfortunately, standard D&D tropes include things like golems, necromancers, magical swords, and fireballs. Which are fucking awesome and you're faced at that point with either accepting that you're going to be some kind of fantasy heartbreaker or risk putting out a weird setting that no one really likes like Earthdawn.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 3:19 am

Everyone is writing their own Fantasy Heartbreaker all the time, some folks just don't know they are yet.

Also, Earthdawn is cool.

Also, Earthdawn has golems, necromancers, magical swords, and fireballs :s

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 3:46 am

I think Lago got it right; D&D isn't a setting, it's a theme. It's DIY fantasy. Most every game is a homebrew setting, so it's really just Fantasy, the Game! no matter what. If Vampire could tell any kind of vampire/horror-fantasy story (including Dracula, Ghost Rider, Frankenstein, Buffy, Blade, and, yes, Twilight), and had no setting, and was DIY urban vampire/horror-fantasy, it would probably get a bit more traction.

The other half of it is; D&D has done much of the legwork for you. It brings you to the cusp of a smooth, enjoyable play experience, and when we play through it and find the hiccups, we all believe that if we just changed these few things, we could make D&D perfect, and since everyone loves Fantasy, the Game! they'll probably buy it, too. The problem is that everyone already has Fantasy, the Game! and buying it again is not, in fact, very appealing. Besides, given the flexibility of the Oberoni Fallacy, Fantasy, the Game! did not need improving.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 3:25 pm

I personally love the idea of making my own fake D&D, formatting it up as a publishing draft of 5e and seeding it as a fake leak of the new edition partway through creating the PHB etc. It would probably be the best way to get my version of D&D played.

Did anyone do this with 4e? Apart from the porn fake that is.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:19 pm

well without the OGL you could print and GIVE away your house rules all you wanted, and due to fair-use, if it requires the product sold by their company you dont get in trouble. just suggest how to change it to work YOUR way from the original, but not give the original information.

for example:

"the score rolls would be change to: force, agility, guts, book smarts, street smarts, savoir faire; respectively."

you never mention STR/etc and can work from their. game rules cannot be copyright, only their presentation, so dont use any of the same proprietary terms and you can do whatever you want. just MOST people want some of the proprietary terms, and those terms are a part of the presentation that IS copyrighted.

trying to leak fake info could get you in trouble, but you can make your FH based off any game and function pretty close, just be mindful how you do it and make sure to use public domain terms.

D&D REALLY has little game design that wasnt used first somewhere else.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 12:56 am

Parthenon wrote:I personally love the idea of making my own fake D&D, formatting it up as a publishing draft of 5e and seeding it as a fake leak of the new edition partway through creating the PHB etc. It would probably be the best way to get my version of D&D played.

Did anyone do this with 4e? Apart from the porn fake that is.

I would support that idea, except that it takes many tens of hours of work to arrange and format an entire version of DnD even when you're not writing a single new word of fluff or mechanics at all.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 1:21 am

OgreBattle wrote:I'm writin' my own and it'll be super spiffy not-D&D/RealD&D! Can't wait to show y'all when its gotten to a presentable stage

Don't know if joking, but I'd read it.

I'm developing a classless D&D variant because I hate classes so much, yet want to avoid point buy due to the failure of Guardians of Order shit, M&M complexity, and GURPS outright failure.

So I did it with feat and spell slots.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 3:16 am

Parthenon wrote:I personally love the idea of making my own fake D&D, formatting it up as a publishing draft of 5e and seeding it as a fake leak of the new edition partway through creating the PHB etc. It would probably be the best way to get my version of D&D played.

Did anyone do this with 4e? Apart from the porn fake that is.

A well put together fake PDF of Warhammer 40k 6th edition made the rounds, it's doable.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 4:27 am

If anyone is that good at layout that they're making convincing-looking fakes of Warhammer 40k and D&D just for shits and giggles, I will seriously just pay you to do layout on some of my games instead (if and when they reach that point).

tenuki · Post by **tenuki** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 9:58 pm

Harnmaster, Runequest, Rolemaster, Ars Magica, Earthdawn have all been kind of successful without being D&D.

Instead of ripping off half-understood old-world myths for a never-ending deluge of monster manuals, and instead of shoehorning the poor critters into D&D's disgusting parody of a conflict simulation engine, these games actually went to the trouble of creating systems that fit the mood of the game world, or vice versa.

Then there have been lots of games specifically designed for or adapted to fit a world background taken from literature, like Stormbringer RPG, Pendragon, or ICE's MERP. (EDIT: though the last one is admittedly an extremely bad fit.)

If you look outside the English-speaking world, the German market for instance has been dominated for almost 30 years by a game called Das Schwarze Auge -- a title with the unfortunate English translation of The Black Eye, while the English black eye is a blue eye ('blaues Auge') in German, but I digress. I've tried it and don't care much for it, but it's got a very rich and well-developed game world and isn't anywhere like D&D.

An even older (1981) German game called Midgard introduced a d20+x resolution mechanic with contested rolls, a hybrid system with class-based skill development costs (about 20 classes), separate HP and fatigue, as well as damage-soaking armor at a time when D&D players had barely graduated from to-hit tables to the much-acclaimed thAC0 system.

There are lots of alternatives to D&D and its clones.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 11:42 pm

tenuki wrote:Harnmaster, Runequest, Rolemaster, Ars Magica, Earthdawn have all been kind of successful without being D&D.

I can't speak for all of those, but Runequest is a game with attributes, hit points, attack rolls, magic spells, etc. Do you really think it would have looked exactly the same if D&D had never existed?

tenuki · Post by **tenuki** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:09 am

Of course not. Do you think a Chevy van would look like it does if nobody had invented the wheel?

Just because a game takes some concepts from D&D and turns them into something vastly better doesn't make the game a D&D clone in the sense that's been discussed in this thread.

- Attributes in RQ aren't nearly as dominant as D&D attributes were when RQ came out (late 70s I think).
- RQ distributes HP among 7 hit locations. That's an innovation. Not one I care for, but nonetheless. More importantly, RQ also was smart enough not to use HP proportional to a character's level/experience, which is an improvement I do indeed care for.
- Attack rolls: Dude! How do you want to determine whether I hit someone or not? Also, actual military sandbox simulations used attack rolls way before D&D/Chainmail did, so there you go.
- Magic spells: A staple that predates D&D by thousands of years. To RQ's great credit, they didn't put up with the ridiculous 'Vancian' (poor Jack) casting D&D uses to this day.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:41 am

For one thing, tenuki, "better" in all the systems your describe is personal opinion at best and probably wrong at worst. For another, taking concepts from D&D shapes the gameplay and setting, and I'd say only Ars Magica fully breaks from D&D fantasy gaming tradition.

Harnmaster and Rolemaster look like the hyper-complex AD&D 1st mechanical heartbreakers, in that they're trying to do what D&D did back when it was much more closely married to its wargaming roots. And isn't Runequest a deliberate throwback to that kind of gaming? They're heartbreakers of a bygone era, like Palladium stuff.

Ars Magica is definitely different, but I don't know how successful it's been.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 10:05 am

In Nomine is a joke.

The French game is based on is "In Nomine Satanis - Magnas Veritas" (often called INS - MV). One side is In Nomine Satanis (playing devils), the other Magnas Veritas (playing angels).

This is not a serious game. It's completely tongue-in-cheek and politically incorrect. In Nomine has completely changed this, and the game lost his soul in the translation.

tenuki · Post by **tenuki** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 10:26 am

Mask_De_H wrote:For one thing, tenuki, "better" in all the systems your describe is personal opinion at best and probably wrong at worst.

I'm sticking to the well-established Den tradition of presenting my objective, personal opinion as fact. (EDIT: And I only applied the word "better" to Runequest, in response to hogarth. I don't consider Rolemaster better than D&D.)

Mask_De_H wrote: For another, taking concepts from D&D shapes the gameplay and setting, and I'd say only Ars Magica fully breaks from D&D fantasy gaming tradition.

Gameplay?
They're fantasy roleplaying games, goddammit. The case for similarities can be made, but I don't see its relevance. Ars Magica indeed tried to get people to adopt a 'troupe' style of play, though I've yet to meet someone who's actually played it that way for any length of time.

Setting:
- Rolemaster doesn't really have a setting unless you count Shadow World, about which the less is said the better. Of all the games I've mentioned, it definitely feels closest to D&D, though I'd rather play that than put up with RM's horrible multi-chart, open-ended percentile resolution mechanic again. And that's saying a lot.
- Harnmaster and RQ are low-fantasy settings with original and detailed world backgrounds (Harn and Glorantha, respectively) that are more than an excuse for having monsters. Both systems are unsuited for combat-oriented games, unless you don't mind rolling up a new character every three sessions or so.
- Earthdawn was a pretty fresh take on heroic fantasy when it came out. There is a thread on here where people extol its virtues at length. If you say it's the same as D&D, well, I can't help you.
- Ars Magica we're agreed on already.

Mask_De_H wrote:Harnmaster and Rolemaster look like the hyper-complex AD&D 1st mechanical heartbreakers, in that they're trying to do what D&D did back when it was much more closely married to its wargaming roots.

Rolemaster yes (although it's much more consistent mechanically than AD&D 1st). Harnmaster no. HM has a super complex combat system, but you can't really use it much because PCs would get their limbs chopped off all the time with no options for reattachment. Trying to run it as a wargame would be an exercise in pointlessless. (Having a super complex combat system that you can't use is kinda pointless in the first place, but the game has been around for 25 years, so there must be people who've found a way to make it work for them.)

But what do you mean, 'look like'? Have you played any of the games I mentioned?

Mask_De_H wrote: And isn't Runequest a deliberate throwback to that kind of gaming?

No.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:15 am

tenuki wrote: I'm sticking to the well-established Den tradition of presenting my objective, personal opinion as fact. (EDIT: And I only applied the word "better" to Runequest, in response to hogarth. I don't consider Rolemaster better than D&D.)

Why? I didn't think the Gaming Den as just a place of presenting only "personal opinions" on here, that others have been saying on here for some reason. People do present generally good cases to what they say, and pending on the subject, what they're saying is indeed "fact". Whether that's just reiteration of old information, or reviewing a system as example of failed design and why (least in those certain parts of it). So if going to state something is better, I would think should present evidence why that is the case to be truly "objective". Otherwise it's just personal opinion, and that combined with stubbornness gets us nowhere on this forum it seems.

Anycase, I actually thought this thread was going to be about the rushing popularity of "Fantasy Heartbreakers" that I noticed awhile back on here. Everyone working on their own little project, and I was kinda curious why everyone was doing that. Is it simply that nobody is willing to agree on consensus/ideas to be in an ideal Heroic Fantasy game, so just simply strive to make their own (despite seems none of these games ever get close to a finished product, even after mentioned years of work)? I would much rather prefer everyone just agree to combine their strengths to make one super awesome Mega Fantasy RPG that ideally, would eclipse what Paizo/Wizards/White Wolf or whoever, could hope to achieve with their very limited scope of "Fantasy".

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:01 pm

"Fantasy" is an impossibly broad design space. It includes the Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland, the Black Company, the Iliad, Abhorsen, Discworld, Malaz, Hogwarts, Llankhmar, Cthulhu and the Wheel of Time. Any game that deliberately includes all of them will end up even more confused than DnD. I much prefer there to be different games for different styles of fantasy, so I can have grave injuries that take weeks to heal while armies march over frozen plains in one campaign and wizards duking it out with polymorph shenanigans in another campaign. Put both of them in the same game and you end up with the same broken mess that DnD gives you.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:23 pm

Anycase, I actually thought this thread was going to be about the rushing popularity of "Fantasy Heartbreakers" that I noticed awhile back on here. Everyone working on their own little project, and I was kinda curious why everyone was doing that. Is it simply that nobody is willing to agree on consensus/ideas to be in an ideal Heroic Fantasy game, so just simply strive to make their own (despite seems none of these games ever get close to a finished product, even after mentioned years of work)?

It was discovered that Phone Lobster and I basically cannot agree on design principles and it is pointless for us to even attempt to add to the same game. The ideal number of people working on a project in any serious way is about five. Too few and it never gets done, too many and you can't make progress because of design disagreement. Even then, it's not enough to simply grab five motivated people who can do basic math, they have to be motivated people who can do basic math who agree on what the final product is supposed to look like.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:10 pm

I eventually broke down and started making Parabellum, but after the initial surge of mechanics, it's slowed down immensely once I found OSH and started thinking about the system's interest to the community.

Really, as motivation goes, I like to think I have it a fair bit. I'm discovering that I need someone else with motivation in order to keep mine going once I hit a major hurdle like I did with Parabellum. Personally, I would love to be in a team of five people if Frank was involved.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:22 pm

You guys have any favorite design books or articles? Right now I'm looking at 'the art of game design' by jesse schell, it divides design principles into lenses that are helpful in getting a sense of direction and how much progress you've made. A quick summary version exists as a deck of cards 'a deck of lenses'

I also like reading the mtg articles by the Roseanne guy
Cook's writing just makes me angry

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 5:48 pm

OgreBattle wrote:You guys have any favorite design books or articles? Right now I'm looking at 'the art of game design' by jesse schell, it divides design principles into lenses that are helpful in getting a sense of direction and how much progress you've made. A quick summary version exists as a deck of cards 'a deck of lenses'

I also like reading the mtg articles by the Roseanne guy
Cook's writing just makes me angry

You know, I've never thought of a favorite. I collect and save articles that are enlightening, such as dissertations even on The Den, WOTC forums, ex-BrilliantGameologists, or even blogs about oldschool RPG playing, JRPGs, and video game design, but there's so many that I never found a favorite.

And Cook pisses just about everyone off, maybe even his fellow designers. There was a thread on /tg/ recently wherein the OP said "Let's all write a letter to Monte", and the next 200 or so posts were mostly virulent insults and threats. The compiled result was rabidly schizo.
Just goes to show he's popular, but not in a good way.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:24 pm

FTR. since I know Fantasy Heartbreaker has lots of conflicting definitions, I was talking specifically about all the games (there are a lot) that rip off BOTH D&D's mechanics AND basic setting/concept. Pathfinder is a good example, but if I really wanted to go dumpster diving through the internet, I could probably find about 19 more.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:27 pm

Blade wrote:In Nomine is a joke.

The French game is based on is "In Nomine Satanis - Magnas Veritas" (often called INS - MV). One side is In Nomine Satanis (playing devils), the other Magnas Veritas (playing angels).

This is not a serious game. It's completely tongue-in-cheek and politically incorrect. In Nomine has completely changed this, and the game lost his soul in the translation.

I disagree. I haven't played the original (obviously: language barrier) but I detected the satirical tones even in the English translation. I also did NOT detect any soullessness.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:32 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:I was talking specifically about all the games (there are a lot) that rip off BOTH D&D's mechanics AND basic setting/concept.

Familiarity, or rather not having it, with the setting and/or rules will always be one of the biggest stumbling blocks to people taking a chance on the game. I'm not saying that making a game that doesn't even look like D&D is impossible to do, I'm just saying that it's a lot less risky for both the game devs and audience to harken back to something that people are already familiar with.

This is why the d20 era was (or will be, once we look back upon it and the current grognards die out from meatbread-based heart attacks) the golden years for gaming. People can totally get others to take a chance on their Superhero or Urban Fantasy RPG because they only have to relearn a setting instead of a system as well.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:53 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:FTR. since I know Fantasy Heartbreaker has lots of conflicting definitions, I was talking specifically about all the games (there are a lot) that rip off BOTH D&D's mechanics AND basic setting/concept. Pathfinder is a good example, but if I really wanted to go dumpster diving through the internet, I could probably find about 19 more.

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